Azure, C#, .NET, Architecture & Related Tech News

This post provides a walkthrough of how to implement basic cache handling at the repository layer using Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP). I’ve chosen PostSharp’s AOP framework and built a relatively simple Domain-Driven Design (DDD) solution in .NET to illustrate how it all ties together.

I want delve into too much AOP detail up front other than to reiterate the usual AOP pitch – that it’s an incredibly useful programming paradigm which addresses cross-cutting coding concerns within application development. What does that mean in English? Once you’ve mastered the basic AOP terminology and implementation requirements you can use it to remove a lot of duplicate code that appears throughout your solution. If you’re not familiar with AOP then take a quick moment to watch one of PostSharp’s many introductory screencasts or browse through their documentation. Keep in mind that AOP isn’t OOP as you work your way through the following code, it complements OOP extremely well but doesn’t follow object-oriented principles. Continue reading →

Redgate just released a free ASP.NET eBook which contains 50 highly condensed, and highly practical, ASP.NET performance tips spanning a number of related topics; ORM, MVC, LINQ, SQL, async, string manipulation etc. Worth mentioning is that all of the tips came from developers in the .NET community.

I’m a big fan of reading abbreviated “best of” tips on any framework in the Microsoft web stack and was quite impressed with the content and it’s presentation. I’d highly recommend this to any junior to intermediate-level ASP.NET developers.

In June 2012 version 1.7 of the Windows Azure Platform release was introduced and with it came the new cache worker role. This provided another distributed cache management option for Azure developers alongside the likes of AppFabric Caching, or Memcached, to name a few. There are a number of ways to utilise and configure cache worker roles and this post covers one of them, providing a step by step guide to creating a new cloud solution where a web and worker role (cache clients) share the same cache worker role (cache cluster). Continue reading →

Everyone loves GitHub, and if they don’t it’s only because they haven’t started using it yet 😉

So what do you do if you have a local Git repository and you want to push it up to GitHub to share it with the greater public, or use it as a collaboration point with a number of other developers without spending any money? Well that’s where GitHub comes in, it’s a “web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system.” – Wikipedia. GitHub sports a number of features but we’re only going to be focusing on it’s ability to house a public repository in this post.

This post provides a visual step-by-step guide to installing Git on a Windows machine and integrating it into Visual Studio. By the end of this guide you’ll be able to use Git as a source code management (SCM) system for all of your Visual Studio projects, and hopefully start to appreciate why Git has become such a huge success.

For those not so familiar with Git it’s a free and open-source Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) developed back in 2005 by a very famous developer in the software world named Linus Torvalds. It’s considered “the SCM” of choice in many circles and for good reason. It’s fast, simple, distributed, can support projects of any size and a variety of workflows. If you want to read more visit the Git Book website – it’s a free online resource for learning about Git. Continue reading →

There’s a lot of things I enjoy about being involved in the software industry, one which falls into the top 10 is talking shop with other software folk. This reason, and the fact that I’m always looking to improve my own skill set, is why I recently purchased “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” and “97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know“. This post is a bite-size review of the programming edition of the “97 Things…” texts and I would encourage anyone who is hands-on with code, regardless of the language, framework, or their level of experience, to take the time to read it.

The book was edited by Kevlin Henney who, you guessed it, collated 97 tips from a variety of industry experts – “collective wisdom from the experts” as the byline reads. The topics all center around programming and range from topics on agile thinking, and pair programming to encapsulation and API design.

A few months after the official release of MVC 4 I decided to go hunting for an MVC 4 book that was less of an introduction to MVC 4 and written more for the seasoned MVC developer. I’d recently delivered an MVC 3 solution so was looking to work my way through a MVC 4 book that was (a) written by some respected authors, (b) would provide a comprehensive guide to the latest iteration of this particular framework, (c) draw attention to those features new to version 4, and (d) provide a structure that easily permitted me to skim over the more familiar concepts.

So I did some research and ended up purchasing Wrox’s Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 by Jon Galloway, Phil Haack, Brad Wilson and K. Scott Allen. Having recently finished it I thought I’d share a review for the benefit of those who are in a similar situation to myself several months ago. Continue reading →